


gold

by deplore



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Eye Trauma, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-27
Updated: 2014-08-27
Packaged: 2018-02-14 10:11:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2187813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deplore/pseuds/deplore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>Akashi makes a gesture beckoning Kise closer before he offers his hand. “Make a choice, then,” Akashi says. “With my left eye, you would have the power to destroy and rend. With my right eye, you would be able to create and nurture. Which will you have?”</p>
  <p>“The left,” Kise answers without hesitating, taking Akashi’s hand in his own.</p>
  <p>“Just so you know, I’ll have your soul whenever you break that promise,” Akashi says.</p>
  <p>Kise brings Akashi’s hand up to his own lips, pressing a gentle kiss at the knuckles before he meets gazes with the demon and says, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course.”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [oeuvre](https://archiveofourown.org/users/oeuvre/gifts).
  * Inspired by [red](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/69291) by layqur. 



> Thank you to layqur for allowing me to remix your fic! I had a lot of fun with it, and I hope you enjoy it. 
> 
> Also many thanks to [Tormalyne](archiveofourown.org/users/tormalyne) for the beta, as well as to her and the rest of Basketball Poet's Society for their hard work setting up this challenge!

It takes Kise two days to draw the summoning circle for all its intricacy, but it only takes two minutes for the demon it calls to blow it to ash and rubble. After the smoke clears, Kise opens his eyes and finds before him one very bored-looking demon, clothed in a thin kimono that matches a little too perfectly to the glint of his eyes: the left molten gold, the right blood red. The demon unfurls his crossed arms and sighs sharply before looking up – even if he’d wanted to, Kise knows he wouldn’t have been able to deny that gaze. Everything else about the demon is deceptively human in appearance, but his eyes betray a strange sort of depth, and looking into them feels like being dragged down into the bottom of the ocean. Inexplicably, Kise finds it hard to breathe until he remembers that he hasn’t called a demon just to let it overpower him.

“To summon me, you must be exceptionally foolish, talented, or ambitious,” the demon says. “Which is it?”

Kise smirks, though he can feel his heart beating hard in his chest, an erratic th-thump that seems to be racing with the shot of adrenaline rushing through his veins. “I’ve been I’m told all of those things before,” he replies, tone light and conversational. “Thanks for showing up, red emperor.”

The demon simply raises an eyebrow and tilts his shoulders back. “Call me Akashi, if you must have a name to call me by. Who are you, human?” he asks.

“I’m Kise Ryouta, crown prince of Kaijou,” Kise replies. “And I want to make a contract with you.”

Akashi turns his nose up, perfectly disdainful. “I don’t care about your mortal royalty, but I’ll make a contract with any human so long as they can fulfill my demands. What can you give to me, Kise Ryouta?”

“Sacrifices, offerings, any material thing that your heart might desire,” Kise answers promptly – but then he pauses and smiles slyly. “And the promise that staying by my side will never be boring.”

“You’re insolent,” Akashi says, but Kise can see the traces of amusement in his expression.

“Extremely insolent,” Kise agrees. “So is that acceptable or not?”

Akashi makes a gesture beckoning Kise closer before he offers his hand. “Make a choice, then,” Akashi says. “With my left eye, you would have the power to destroy and rend. With my right eye, you would be able to create and nurture. Which will you have?”

“The left,” Kise answers without hesitating, taking Akashi’s hand in his own.

“Just so you know, I’ll have your soul whenever you break that promise,” Akashi says.

Kise brings Akashi’s hand up to his own lips, pressing a gentle kiss at the knuckles before he meets gazes with the demon and says, “I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course.”

“Then show me your resolve and claim what you desire,” Akashi replies, eyelashes lowered. He turns to bare the left side of his face to Kise, and Kise knows without having to ask what Akashi means he must do – demons are creatures of consumption, after all. Kise kisses above Akashi’s eyelid, and Akashi lets him press them to the floor as Kise takes Akashi’s eye and swallows it whole, tinging his brown eyes an unnatural yellow.

Akashi doesn’t flinch, doesn’t tremble, doesn’t scream – even as a gory mix of bodily fluids drips down his face, all he does is stare at Kise appraisingly with his remaining eye. “The color fits you,” he says, and reaches up to wipe his blood off of Kise’s lips with the pad of his thumb.

 

 

 

After two years of preparation, the kingdom of Kaijou breaks the peaceful coexistence that’d settled across the continent in recent decades and begins a campaign to annex territories from its neighboring countries – through treaties and clever words when Kise can manage it, and by the devastation of battle when he can’t. Rumors spread across the lands of Kaijou’s king-to-be: the golden prince who smiles as he bathes the land in blood, the young conqueror who would settle for nothing less than everything. Before five years have passed, Seirin is absorbed completely into Kaijou after its capital is razed to the ground and Shuutoku is left in ruins after a one-sided war; in ten years, half the world is contained in Kaijou’s sphere of influence. The name Kise Ryouta echoes across the lands with both fear and reverence. Kise Ryouta, who sits at his throne wearing a crown which pales next to the color of his eyes, the sort of beautiful that makes him difficult to look at head-on. Kise Ryouta, who could make a kingdom swoon lovestruck when the sunlight shines on him just as soon as he could bring that same kingdom to its knees at the tip of his sword.

By Kise’s side, Akashi watches him claw the world to him piece by piece and doesn’t lack in entertainment. “Of all the humans to ever summon me, you are singular,” Akashi murmurs one night as they lie in Kise’s bed together. “It was worth being picky over who I let contract with me.”

Kise props his head up on his hands and admires the way that Akashi looks with sheets of satiny gold twisted around his body before crawling over and clinging to Akashi’s body, pushing Akashi further into the softness of his bed with the weight of his body. Akashi reaches around to rest his arms at the small of Kise’s back – it’s unnatural that Akashi’s body temperature never changes from cool to the touch and that he never breaks a sweat, but still Kise’s drawn to the way Akashi’s body fits against his own. He presses his mouth to the curve of Akashi’s neck to kiss and bite along it, holding Akashi until it feels like they’re melting into a single body, a single existence. “Foolish and talented and ambitious,” Kise echoes, and looks up to flash a beaming smile in Akashi’s direction. “It’s usually a pick two sort of deal, isn’t it? But somebody lacking any of the three wouldn’t be able to do as much as I’ve done, I bet.”

“You’ve known from the beginning that you’re undertaking something that no human, no matter what powers he’s given, would ever be able to single-handedly accomplish, don’t you?” Akashi asks.

“Of course it’s impossible,” Kise says brightly. He leans in and mouths over Akashi’s left eyelid affectionately, tonguing against skin into the hollowness underneath as he intertwines their legs together. Kise’s learned that demons experience sensations differently than humans, but this is one thing that both can take pleasure in: touching and being touched. Tilting his head, he murmurs into Akashi’s ear: “It’s never been about succeeding in the first place.”

Akashi reaches up to cup Kise’s face in his hands, touch just a little too demanding to be tender. “Perhaps you ought to have been born a demon,” Akashi replies, and opens both of his eyelids as he smiles, revealing the empty space where his left eye should be. “No human has ever worn my eye so well.”

Kise watches as Akashi licks his lips and knows that his words are no compliment.

 

 

 

Kise’s admirers call him the Sun’s beloved child, and so it’s only fitting that the first traitor reveals himself on the night of the winter solstice: a young man from a family of magistrates who showed all the promises of great capability and enough greed to trade in his loyalty for a favored position in the kingdom’s hierarchy. What Kise fails to take into account, so lulled into complacency by all his success, is that some other kingdom might offer him more riches and more power – or that Akashi might prefer to stand by and amuse himself with Kise’s human fallibility.

By Kise’s orders, Akashi brings the traitor in for judgment just hours before the solstice festival is set to begin. Even in the dead of winter, Akashi wears a kimono with layers so thin that a normal human would’ve frozen to death walking outside in it – the crimson red fabric pools around his feet as he drags the traitor into Kise’s personal chambers. The only lights Kise keeps going are flickering candles in crystal holders hung from the ceiling: the flames reflect in the crystals and defract light eerily, so that the golden birds stitched into Akashi’s clothes almost look as if they have lives of their own, ready to push off into flight.

Akashi lifts the man up to his full height effortlessly by the back of his neck so that Kise can get a clear view of the fear on his face before dropping him, leaving the traitor to collapse to the floor and gasp painfully for breath as Akashi crosses over to join Kise where he sits. Kise smiles gently as he readjusts the half-mask in the likeness of a cat Akashi wears to obscure the left side of his face, decorated with marigolds that Kise tucks fresh into the binding every few days. “Fujioka Tomaru,” Akashi says softly – but in the empty expanse of the room, his voice echoes hollowly against the walls. “He has been conspiring with the Touou Empire for the last month, if not longer.”

Kise laughs and the sound rings like bells. “I should have figured it out earlier,” he says, tone deceptively easygoing. “Aominecchi’s so bad at putting up a front, it was so obvious that he knew more than he was trying to let on. So how much information did he pass?”

“Most of his information was limited to the state of the kingdom’s finances and its recent negotiations with the kingdom of Yosen,” Akashi answers.

“Ambitious and foolish,” Kise says. He smiles and rises to his full height – his yellow robes trail against the marble floor as he walks over to where Fujioka is hunched over, tilting Fujioka’s chin up with the point of his toes. Kise stares down at him and Fujioka shakes under Kise’s gaze, transfixed by the way the lowlight in the room shines off of his eyes. Finally, though, Kise turns around and throws his hand up carelessly, not even looking back as he issues his order: “Akashicchi, you can do whatever you like with him, just make sure he’s not a problem anymore. I’m expected to make my appearance at the festival soon, so I’ll be off now.”

Akashi wrinkles his nose delicately. “Don’t just make me clean up after your messes, Ryouta,” he replies disdainfully.

“Then just let him take care of himself,” Kise suggests, tone just a little too carefree, too swept up in all that the two of them have achieved that he hasn’t even considered that one traitor will turn into two, and two traitors will breed a conspiracy; or that the golden prince, beloved by the Sun, might soon see the dusk of his reign. “I’m sure he’d rather take that option over playing with you, Akashicchi.”

Kise leaves and Akashi stares contemplatively for a few moments at Fujioka Tomaru, hunched in a disgraceful pile and so desperate that Akashi can taste it in the air – but he can sense all the stronger Fujioka’s will to continue living.

All Akashi does is turn to follow Kise, and reflects to himself that his most favored human is, in the end, still only human.

 

 

 

Kise’s first misstep is letting a traitor run around under his nose for so long without doing anything about it. The second misstep is that Fujioka Tomaru doesn’t kill himself, and instead runs to the Empire of Touou – the downfall escalates from there as tenuous underground networks reveal and strengthen themselves, encouraging protests across the former principalities that Kaijou had annexed over the years. The uprising is fast and it is violent, as if it has a life of its own and a hunger that can only be sated with a catastrophic end for the conqueror king of Kaijou, and in a matter of weeks it breaches the palace walls and begins to break down the castle doors.

Kise Ryouta watches the crowds draw nearer from his chambers and smiles fondly down at them from his window. Night has fallen, but the rioters set fire to the grounds and the flames set Kise’s eyes ablaze. “Akashicchi,” he says. “When I’m dead, I won’t be able to keep our promise, you know.”

“By admitting that, you’ve already broken it,” Akashi replies, not a twinge of mercy in his voice even for his most prized human, his most cherished contractor.

But Kise just laughs, as bright and vibrant as always. “Good, I’d rather meet my end at your hands than some bunch of strangers,” he says. He crosses over to where Akashi is standing and takes Akashi’s half-mask off to stroke at Akashi’s closed eyelid, gentle and affectionate.  This time, though, it’s Akashi who lays Kise to the floor and kisses him, biting into Kise as Akashi unravels Kise in earnest, sinking his teeth into flesh so that he can tear Kise’s soul away from it, plucking the essence of Kise’s being away from muscles and veins, skin and bones with care – Kise groans underneath him but clings onto Akashi with all the strength he has left as Akashi savors him and eats slowly, thoroughly, letting the power Kise had borrowed from him seep back into his body as he relishes in the taste: both tart and sweet all at once, with just the faintest undertone of saffron and blood from where Akashi’s teeth cut into the inside of his mouth.

Human beings aren’t meant to be capable of changing a demon’s power, yet as Akashi sits up, Kise sees with the last bit of awareness he can muster up that Akashi’s left eye has grown back not the color of melting gold but the soft yellow of blooming marigolds. A laugh rises in Kise’s chest and sputters out before it can reach his throat, but Kise doesn’t think he imagines it when Akashi reaches out to wipe the blood off of Kise’s lips.

When the rioters break into Kise Ryouta’s personal chambers, they find him dead and with a smile on his face.


End file.
